Goddammit Dave We love you so much
by Darkest Fire
Summary: It's Dave Week! So, to appreciate Dave these are my 'drabbles' about him.
1. Mayo R (canon moment)

They stood on the roof, swords in hand. Dave cracked up at Jade's colourful pirate sword – it just clashed so badly with her dark grey skin and ruby slippers. Not that Dave thought he'd be better with that sword, but damn. Those were some rad slippers.

"Her Imperious Condescension has duly noted your ridiculous tantrum," Dave ignored her, distracted by the Mayor. He waved at him, gaining a wave back, and only began to listen at the mention of his sword.

"Now take your welsh sword."

"Why?"

"Since you have been identified as the one who must deal English his fatal blow we will need to make sure you are battle ready," Lord English? "And you do not seem very battle ready to me Dave," She stepped into a stance, "Show me what you can do."

"Wait! Since when could use a sword. Also, what's up with that dumb sword?" Jade huffed, crossing her arms and sniffing disdainfully,

"I will not hear another word of such appalling slander about this fine weapon. It's colourful and it's silly and it's a sword. End of story," She huffed again, "As for why I can wield it, I surpassed the need for a strife specibus quite some time ago."

"How?"

"Haven't you climbed any more god tiers over the last few years? What were you even doing on that meteor?" she asked accusingly.

"Oh, yeah no. I climbed a few, yeah." Dave lied, thinking of how he spent three years expanding can town with the Mayor and antagonising Karkat over Terezi.

"What badges do you have on your kiddie camper handysash?" Oh crap.

"Which ones do you have?" Nice save Strider.

"I asked you first." Crap, crap, crap.

"Show me your badges and you can see mine," he smirked. That was a great save, "I want to scope out this universal specibus badge that sounds pretty cool actually." It did. He wondered what coloured it be. Would it be brown like a Girl Scouts? Oh god. Now he's missing Thin Mints.

"Dave," she drew out his name, "We both know neither the kiddie camper handysash not the badges sewn onto it are real objects." Really? God dammit.

"Oh yeah. It's pretty easy to forget sometimes though." He hoped she'd believe him.

"Yeah." Drawing out the word made it seem like she didn't believe him.

Time to evacuate before you seem like a proper idiot.

"I think we're getting side-tracked by the kiddie camper shit. Are you really suggesting that we do an actual sword fight right now?" She moved back into her previous stance, "Like for training purposes?" He asked, just to clarify. He really didn't want to do this. Bro would make him do this. On this roof as well.

Jade spewed some evil crap about the empress.

"Will you cut out with the evil Jade baloney? I'm not going to fight you. My rooftop duelling days are over." He stressed the last word as Jade cried,

"En garde!"

Dave tipped his head back, rolling his eyes and groaned,

"Even if we just went balls out jackass bananas with our swords here, I mean realistically how much appreciable advancement in my battle skills would even result from that? Are you actually thinking this though or just going through the vaguely nefarious motions that come with the territory of being 'evildog!Jade'?" She brandished her sword and snarled,

"I'm gonna go through the vaguely nefarious motions of kicking your ass in a minute if you don't put up your dukes!"

He didn't think she wouldn't. She probably be worse than Bro and he told her so. She then spewed some bullshit about 'time trickery'.

"No!"

"Yes!" sensing that a yes/no fight would and could last until the end of time he relented.

"Ok, here I go," Jade's mouth dropped open in surprise, "Wait. Nah." She growled.

"Dave! Just try a little time travel to get this fight started. See look, one of your time doubled is surely predestined to come from a few minutes in the future and appear behind me for a surprise attack, right about." She drew out the 'I' in 'right' before jumping, spinning and shouting,

"Now!" She looked into the air confused. Dave watched, tapping his foot as this went on for a few minutes before she turned to him accusingly,

"Dave, why is your future self being such a wet blanket?" She moaned, pouting.

"I told you. I'm not time traveling. I think I'm giving it up for good actually."

Jade pouted more, rolling her eyes. Dave became very aware of the Mayor standing behind Jade and the Nakodile butting up into him. Damn, that thing it creepy. It's also slightly cute.

"I'm serious. The thing is, being a time guy, like actually mastering time travel, I'm pretty sure that involves is learning to never use it. See, it's like karate."

Dave started pacing and Jade nearly groaned – here we go.

"Well, it's more like what they say about karate. That you learn it so you don't use it, but I mean, we all know the truth about karate is if you know karate then, obviously in reality, you use it all the time. Like doing lethal fucking crane kicks and sweet karate chops while walking down the street just 'cause you can. It's a god damn no brainer that's what you do with karate, but, see, with time travel all the stuff about learning it so you don't have to use it is true. There's no good that can come of it. You can crunch the logic on the loops all you want, but all you're doing is painting yourself into a corner, creating inevitabilities you have to rehearse and enact. Or face death for yourself or everyone you know. Sometimes facing death is the very inevitability you have to rehearse, and then you wait and wait knowing it's coming. Knowing it has to happen. How do you think it made me feel when we were gathering up all those frogs? I knew the whole time in a little while you would have to watch me get shot, but I couldn't say anything or it would mess it all up!" Dave began to slowly get louder until he shouted the word up.

He carried on as Jade got lost in his frenzied cries and just stood there as he ranted non-stop, "But I couldn't say anything or it would mess it all up. All cause I thought it would be cool to be Marty mcfucking Fly. But, instead of shredding Johnny B Goode on guitar to get my parents to bang, my crowning performance was doing a funny dance while getting pumped full of lead! The-"

Jade glanced back at the Mayor, then at Dave and rested her sword against the ground.

"-But the DeLorean was actually a pig, purple moon and the 1980s was me accidently reaching god tier and living on a shitty meteor for a while. And I guess Rose was Doc Brown. Doc Brown accidently reached god tier too. Ok, I guess this is where the analogy falls apart, but you get what I mean?" He imploringly looked at Jade.

She scratched the back of her neck and answered,

"Sorry Dave, you lost me there. After the part where I shot you."

"Damn," His face lit up, "Ok, lemme start over!"

"Oh em gee, no!" Cried Jade.

The conversation moved onto Lord English and Dave not caring about "Lord English or his nebulous atrocities out in nowherespace".

"Jeez, you sure have some issues," Jade sighed, "honestly it has become very tiresome listening to this sort of thing. I though Davesprite had problems," What? Why was Davesprite involved? "His issues I could kind of understand. I thought you might be different, being the Alpha Dave and all. But no," she drew out the 'no' mockingly, "You might be even more messed up inside than he was!"

"What? Why are you dragging that guy into this?" Wait! He needed to investigate, "What happened with you and him anyway?"

"None of your business!" Jade snapped, cheeks becoming a darker black.

"It kind of is – he's bird me. That clearly means I have a right to know."

"That doesn't make any sense!"

"You said he had issues," pushed Dave, "What issues?"

Jade yelled, annoyed,

"Forget I mentioned it!" Now he was suspicious,

"Was he talking shit about me the whole time or something? I know he resents me for being the real Dave."

"Don't say that, you aren't the real Dave!" she replied shrilly, "Well, you are. But phrasing it like that is so mean! He's just as real as you. And when you imply he isn't, you sound like a jerk!" She got into his face.

"Man, I knew it! I knew he was poisoning your view of me all those years and I wasn't there to say anything or defend against his slander. So now you think I'm a neurotic douche!"

"The only reason I think you're a neurotic douche is because you're acting like one now!" She screeched.

"Yeah, but I only started acting like a neurotic douche half way through this conversation! You clearly had an axe to grind with me from the start and I want to know why. What did I ever do to deserve this shit from you?"

"You broke my heart!" She beseeched loudly. Dave stopped, confused.

"What? I did? When?"

"Ok, not you. Davesprite did," He's going to kill him for getting the blame, "But you're basically the same guy!"

And so Dave went on a tangent about how he wasn't Davesprite, Jade rolling her eyes and opening and closing one hand repeatedly while he talked.

"Did you tell him he's got to murder the incredible hulk Jade? No I think not." Jade sighed, spying the Mayor pottering about the Nakodiles. Grimdark took over her mind again, whipping away the sixteen year old she was.

"Dave, I did my best to put all this behind me a long time ago." Her voice took on the smooth quality of a villains, "I did not come here to dredge up any of this drama with you. Besides, such behaviour is unbecoming of Her Condescension's loyal subordinates," Hell no was Dave one of Sea Hitler's dogs, "You can be stubborn all you want, but I will force you to comply with her wishes one way or another. It will be quite easy actually," She began walking to the Carapace, smirking, "All I have to do is target the people you care about most."

Dave's eyes widened,

"Hey! What are you doing?" He stepped forward, "Don't you dare touch the Mayor!" Jade grabbed him and peered down, biting her lip,

"He is a very cute Mayor. It, therefore, pains me to have to do this." Dave ran forward, screaming,

"Get away from him!"

Jade kicked him off the roof as soon as Dave reached her. He doubled over, a sudden pain tore at his chest and a yell of

"No!"

Escaped him.

His mind blanked and he launched himself over the edge of his roof, desperately pushing himself to reach his friend before he was fried by lava.

His heart pounded, panic engulfed his mind and the Mayor hit the lava. Screaming, Dave grabbed him and swooped up. Then he realised that the Mayor hadn't been burned and sobbed,

"Got you!" He squished his cheek against the Mayor's head and sobbed,

"I got you, I got you, I got you, I got you. I'm not letting go, no never again," The Mayor brought his arms up as if he was flying and Dave let out a watery laugh, "Never again. I got you Mayor. Never, never, never again. It's ok, everything will be ok. I have you, you're safe and sound now. It's all going to be alright. It's ok, I won't let her hurt you Mayor. No, no, no, never, never, never."

He repeated this awhile, trying to reassure himself more than the Mayor.

"When this is all over lets run away together, just you and me. We can build a real can town and we'll live there together, alone, all by ourselves and forget this nightmare ever happened." Dave smiled at this idea, perfectly happy with living the rest of his life with the carapace, in a can. Understanding that the Mayor is an alien and probably didn't know what he was saying he did what he'd seen would make the Troll's feel better.

He shooshed-papped the Mayor.

Jade watched all over this, before face-palming and bemoaning the difficulty of being bad.


	2. The Outcome of a Bet (ship)

There was a pile of stuff on a meteor. That pile contained smuppets of all colours and crappy romance novels. It had pillows and fabrics on top. There was a duvet thrown over it all.

Between those layers, curled up together to ward away the horrorterrors, rested two beings. One had grey skin, the other had pale. One had blond hair, the other had black. One had horns, small as they were, the other was hornless.

One was awake.

Dave Strider curled Karkat's coarse hair around his fingers, consequently waking him up. The almost 7 sweeps old Troll glared at Dave, before softening into the calming ministrations. Dave could swear he was purring.

Karkat flopped over onto Dave's chest - one arm curled around his neck, the other slipped under his back and neither of them could tell which legs were theirs, being so intertwined.

They lay together and he scratched at Karkat's scalp, revelling in the little breathy growls he released.

Banging on the metal door urged the, the, the...

What even where they? Rose mused.

Anyway, she banged on the door and waited for them to emerge in states of undress.

Dave trotted out first in sweatpants and shades, tweaking her hairband playfully and breaking his stoicism (which he did rather a lot) to flash her a grin.

Rose smiled back, cheekily grabbing for his shades and chuckling when he darted back, before leaning against the wall and waiting for Karkat to emerge. That he did about five minutes later, clad in pyralspite printed underpants from Terezi and his customary turtleneck jumper - naturally backwards.

"What even are you and Dave. I mean, I have my suspicious. But?" He just flush and ducked his head, scurrying past her.

Vriska watched them from across the make shift 'living-room', as the humans called it.

Karkat was sat reading innocently enough (however everyone knew his books were no where near as innocent as he made it seem) and Dave was lay next to him, head resting on Karkat's lap. She huffed, seeing how the Mayor sat on Dave's chest and listened to him witter on and on and on.

What was up with them? Were they Moirails? Matesprites?

She glared as Karkat began stroking his head. She hoped the latter - she did have money and a decent tube of lipstick on it -, but this was seeming to be far to close the papping.

Terezi cackled and smacked her with her cane.

Karkat looked up at the outbreak of Alternian swears and watched as Vriska gave chase out of the room. Normal Terezi; hit 'em then leave 'em. As Dave would say.

The Mayor slid off Dave's chest, presumably pottering of to collect the cans of Tab the other Trolls had left there.

"Y'know, you're, like, the best boyfriend ever." Dave laughed at the blush he'd inflicted.

"Do you think any of them had bet on 'human boyfriends'?" Dave shrugged, before pushing himself up with his arms and catching Karkat in a soft kiss.

On the other side of a metal door, one Kanaya Maryam held out her hands for her newly owned lipstick and cash.


	3. Big Ass Horns (AU)

Dave cackled as he looked down at his own, grey skin. Wasn't this interesting. He looked up at Karkat. Startlingly human with orange hair and the largest scowl he'd ever scene.

A horrified yell made him forgo his inspection of his knew body and carry on walking through the meteor.

"Rose!" He shouted, "Check this out!" A reply came from doors to his left,

"If it is the species swap that has just happened, then yes. I have 'checked it out'."

He pushed open the door and suddenly swore at the jarring pain on his head.

"You knocked your big ass horns against the door frame, nook stain." Snarled Karkat as he stepped around him.

Rose stood there, grey skinned with a pair of hours which rose up a few inches before slicking back towards the ground in a graceful arch, not looking impressed.

"What did you do?" She asked, still as calm as usual.

"Nothing!" He answered, affronted. It wasn't his fault when something went wrong. "Do you have a mirror?"

She raised her eyebrows and nodded to a large shard leaning against the wall.

He walked over and stared into black and orange eyes. Pretty typical troll stuff: sharp teeth, black hair and orange claws. He glanced up at his horns. God! Those were tall. Why didn't they weigh more? They corkscrewed straight up into the air for almost a meter.

Curious, he brought his hand to his mouth and bit down on it. He winced at the sharp pain but watched as green blood bubbled to the surface. Was that the same shade as Kanaya's? He glanced at the now brunette who was listening to Karkat rage.

"Rose, what blood do you have now?" She didn't even look at him

"Purple." He nodded and looked down at himself.

"Hey Karkles,"

"What?" He growled, almost as ferociously as he could as a troll.

"Now I can see what an alien dick looks like."

"Fuck you!"


	4. Over five minutes (sad)

The bomb counted down in front of them. From just over 5 minutes.

He looked to his left, to his sister staring at it transfixed. She caught him and turned her head.

"Dave, I'm sorry." He looked at the countdown. 4:58. Absentmindedly answering,

"It's ok." He gulped, turning back to the bomb. Did the death beds even work? He didn't want to die. But it would be better this way, he supposed. Better than on the end of a sword, the end of Bro's sword.

"Dave,"

"Yeah?" He turned to her again, Rose's face was wrought with some emotion. Sadness? Dave didn't know.

"I. I'm scared." She sniffed,

"Same." His eyes welled up. He didn't want to die - he was only thirteen. 3: 21. "I'm scared to die."

Rose let out a shaking sob and stood on the orange slab, almost buckling with the ferocity of her tears. Dave stared at the countdown, his own tears snaking down his cheeks.

"I don't want to die." He sobbed as Rose frantically nodded, as if that would change their fate. She echoed him as the countdown hit two minutes.

He began hyperventilating. Two minutes! He had two minutes. They had two minutes.

Locking the joints of his knees so he didn't collapse to them, he looked to Rose. She reached out a shaking hand.

Craving the comfort he leaned over and gripped her fingers. Their sweaty palms didn't bother them as they looked to each other for comfort without leaving the slab, just in case they could survive.

The liquid bubbled over as the they had 10 seconds.

"I'm sorry." Whimpered Rose as they clutched at each other harder.

A deafening noise was heard and the last thing Dave felt was being ripped away from Rose.


	5. Relieved giggles (happy)

**Sequel to last chapter**

His head pounded.

He opened his eyes to... Red?

Peeling himself off the surface, Dave noted the change of clothes and the fire truck red stone he was stood on.

"That felt like being ran over by a van. Not a white van, like the one someone would offer sweets to little kiddies from and then kidnap them in or maybe they'd just want to give out sweets. Maybe their Grandmother had baked to much. Anyway, it felt like a proper van. Maybe a truck. One that'd have pure oak furniture or some shit in it."

Rose groaned from where she was sprawled face down on her death bed and raised her head to glare at him before letting it flop back down.

"But, hey! We're alive." He grinned and jumped over the gap, shaking Rose and rolling her over.

"C'mon Rosie,"

"Don't call me that."

"Be happy! Your suicidal plan didn't work." She shot up, banging her head in to his nose.

"What?" She shouted, staring at the destroyed moon around them.

"Well, it did. Just not the suicidal bit!"

She laughed and pulled him down into a hug. It seemed her delight was contagious as he giggled with her. Actual giggles. Relieved giggles and he was not ashamed to admit it.

"We're not dead!" She cheered as she pushed him off and rose to her feet. Reaching down and pulling Dave up as well almost had her toppling over when he launched himself at her.

"C'mon, don't we have some aliens to meet?" He said, collecting himself.

If he broke stoicism to flash her a grin? So fucking what?


End file.
